Clay Shirky Summary Response Larissa Ibarra

    Clay Shirky's "How cognitive surplus will change the world" describes the importance of using cognitive surplus to civic work. He defines cognitive surplus as, "the ability of the worlds population to volunteer and to contribute and collaborate on large sometimes global projects" (Shirky). Shirky talks about how most of the information humans encounter on the internet is communal, communal information is information made by the participant for the participant. On the other hand civic information is created by the participant for the entire world to enjoy. He highlights a website,Ushahidi, dedicated to having and sharing information about Kenya called "crisis mapping".  After Shirky speaks about Ushahidi he makes the point that most spend their time on the internet on things that do not benefit the world, but if everyone devoted some of their free time to helping the rest of the world, the whole world could change by helping each other.

    “How cognitive surplus will change the world” by Clay Shirky effectively portrays how valuable it is to contribute to digital technology to help others because of how much free time the world has to be making a difference. If everyone gave some of their time to spread the information on somewhere like Ushahidi the world would be able to see what is going on in the rest of world and could help. This idea of using cognitive surplus to spread information could benefit schools because relief projects could be started in school if even more websites were created around the world. A crisis mapping website could even be created for schools, if there is a problem such as a broken water fountain or a leak in the roof it could be posted on the website by students or staff members so it could be fixed and all of the information could be kept in one spot. Shirky’s presentation style was very visual which made the information easier to take in because there was a lot of different connects made throughout his talk. He also had a growing graph within his presentation which was nice to have because instead of have all of the information thrown at you at once it only revealed the information he was discussing at the time.

 

 

Shirky was also very descriptive with his hands used his gestures to convey the movement of something of to show emphasis on it.

The Ted talk was told a story, which from Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind is the best way to give a message or tell information. “How cognitive surplus will change the world” can help me with my own Ted talk because of the visuals and how they captivate the audience. Clay Shirky defines cognitive surplus and show how it can be used to benefit the whole world.